LOS ANGELES district reaches deal to reopen schools.

LOS ANGELES — A tentative deal announced Tuesday would put students in the nation’s second-largest school district back in class next month.

The Los Angeles Unified School District and the teachers union said the tentative agreement provides a number of “safety parameters” that would allow a partial reopening of campuses.

As with most other California public schools, the district’s more than 600,000 students have been learning online for almost a year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s our shared commitment to the highest safety standards and spirit of trust and collaboration we will take with us back to schools,” Superintendent Austin Beutner and United Teachers Los Angeles President Cecily Myart-Cruz said in a joint statement.

The plan, which needs ratification by the school board and the union membership, lays out a road map for reopening schools after Los Angeles County drops from the state’s most-restrictive covid-19 tier, purple, into the red tier, which county officials said could happen as early as this week.

Preschool and elementary schoolers would return in mid-April. Middle and high school students would follow at the end of April.

The agreement says teachers, along with nurses and other union members, won’t have to return to work until they have been fully vaccinated for the coronavirus.

The teachers union had demanded such a requirement in refusing to accept an earlier mid-April target date. In a statement Tuesday, however, Myart-Cruz said the agreement meets “all of our key safety protocols.”

The Board of Education appeared ready to approve the agreement.

“It’s been a long tough year but this is truly the best possible outcome,” member Jackie Goldberg said.

Under the plan, preschoolers would have fullday in-person instruction, while elementary pupils will use a hybrid model combining some time in class and the rest online. Class sessions will be staggered, with some students going in the morning and others in the afternoon to keep classes small enough to permit social distancing.

Students would still have the option of remaining entirely in distance learning.

All students and staff members will have to wear masks and practice social distancing and they will be tested before returning to campus and weekly thereafter, the statement said.

Meanwhile, parents across Puerto Rico knelt down Wednesday to adjust their children’s masks and backpacks as public schools reopened for the first time in nearly a year despite the pandemic, with officials reporting scarce attendance.

The hugs outside schools were followed by a temperature check and a dollop of hand sanitizer at some of the 96 of the U.S. territory’s 858 public schools authorized to reopen because they were in a municipality with a low number of coronavirus cases and had met a list of requirements issued by Puerto Rico’s Health Department.

For now, only kindergartners, special-education students and children in first, second, third and 12th grades are allowed to return to school. They will attend in-person classes only twice a week and be dismissed before noon, with school cafeterias remaining closed, although there is a “grab-and-go” option.

In-person attendance is not obligatory, and remote classes were still being offered.

“It was important to have in-person education once again, even if it’s little by little,” Gov. Pedro Pierluisi said.

The schools that reopened Monday were in about 50 municipalities, with openings and closures expected to fluctuate in upcoming weeks depending on the number of coronavirus cases in a specific municipality and whether any infections are reported at a school.

The island of 3.2 million people has reported more than 180,700 confirmed and suspected coronavirus cases and more than 2,000 deaths. As of Sunday, more than 607,000 people have been vaccinated, with nearly 227,000 having received the second dose.